


the breeze-up

by wildcard_47



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: (everyone else is off building carnivale or something), First Time, Fluff and Smut, Horse Metaphors, M/M, Service Top!James, Touch-Starved, bottom!Francis, lots of metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcard_47/pseuds/wildcard_47
Summary: With a week to go until first sunrise, Francis and James have a shockingly honest conversation.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 18
Kudos: 100
Collections: Fall Fitzier Exchange





	the breeze-up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [othersideofthis (hikaru)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaru/gifts).



The coals in the boiler had burned low enough that the omnipresent chill in the room and the slight gusts emanating from the Preston Patent Illuminators and the windows of the Great Cabin had crept into James’s hands and feet, making him clumsy as he scrawled a remainder at the bottom of the page.

Across the table, staring at his gloved hands with his coat thrown on hastily over his nightshirt and trousers, Francis did not seem to be faring much better with the inventories. Although he was not really ill anymore, merely puny and contemplative as opposed to the sour roaring beast who had stomped and shouted all over Terror, he still seemed withdrawn in a way James could not parse. In truth, the last time he had looked so pathetically sad was when they had first spoken about Sophia Cracroft.

“Captain Crozier? Are you all right?”

No response. Francis’s gaze was firmly fixed on his hands.

“Francis?”

“What?” This time, Francis startled out from wherever his thoughts had been, shuffling a few papers in a poor attempt to seem productive. “Sorry. I’ve got the, ah—if you need...”

“Nothing so dire as all that.” James shook his head, made a show of setting his pen back in the inkwell. “Only you looked pensive. Nothing to worry about.”

Instead of being reassured, Francis pursed his mouth in a self-deprecating manner.

“Although I imagine,” said James, choosing his next turn of phrase very carefully, “such pretty words are of little comfort, given the circumstances.”

“Christ alive.” Francis glanced toward the windows, although the glimmer of a smile pulsed at the corner of his mouth. “S’pose you could tell me another one of those damn heroic stories you’re always prattling on about. God knows I’ve heard few voices but my own these past few weeks.”

“Ah, and thus you shall listen to my tales with renewed appreciation for their soporific charms.” James sought to make his voice as mellifluous as possible, though the question he truly wanted to pose had nagged at his mind, in some form or fashion, for three long years. Had Francis’ vicious insults and snarling tempers stemmed from more than the presence of the drink? “Clearly, you are become so starved for honest conversation that e’en unceasing prattle from a former enemy shall do.”

Francis laughed, sudden and bright; it encouraged James to play up the character.

“Stranger circumstances have arisen on polar voyages, to be sure. Why, just yesterday, I witnessed a little emperor penguin tossing ice clumps at its brethren in an approximation of the men’s snow-fights. And the day before—six sundogs in the sky at midnight, in place of the aurora.”

“First sunrise is not for another week, James. We’ll have twenty seconds of twilight all day, if that.”

“Ah! So you admit we may glimpse as few as five sundogs, sir.”

James was pleased to see Francis smile again, though this time, the good cheer was short lived. Francis’s happy mood slipped away as quickly as the sun.

“What is it?” he asked.

Francis pushed a few papers back toward the center of the table. “You need not concern yourself with me, James.”

“I know that I need not,” James said, spreading his hands. “But I would hear any of your concerns, if you are willing. No matter how small. There is no shame in this, Francis. Not between us.”

Sighing, Francis inclined his head in assent. He was silent for the space of several breaths before he inhaled a sharp breath, gritting his teeth together as he spoke again. “Past few weeks have not been easy.”

Of course not, James wanted to say, but bit at the inside of his mouth, fearful that any interruption would silence Francis before he could begin.

“In truth, I–I’ve not ever spent so much time apart from the men. Even before drying out, when I was…”

“Seeking the brown study?”

Thankfully, Francis met James’s arch gaze with a grimace instead of falling silent. “An ill-tempered tyrant.”

“You are not the first polar officer to seek refuge in the bottle. Nor shall you be the last. This place...the melancholy is unrelenting.”

“Well.” Francis appeared unconvinced. “You have somehow managed to lead without falling prey to your worst instincts.”

“I certainly have not,” said James, more sternly than he meant to, judging by the flicker of shock that lit Francis’s gaze. “Take up the subject with Bridgens, if you do not believe me. I have moped in my cabin for hours on end….examined my own reflection in the mirror till e’en Narcissus grew tired of it….all manner of actions unbecoming for a Captain.”

“Those are no great failings, James.” A deprecating smile now bloomed at the corners of Francis’s mouth. “Christ. I thought you might say you’d come to blows with Dundy. Gorged yourself on chocolate, or….well.”

“What?”

Francis averted his eyes to the table as he spoke. “Found some other way to entertain yourself alone.”

James furrowed his brow, hoping he had achieved the suspicious peering glare of some ancient great-aunt as he sat up. “I cannot fathom what you might mean, sir. How might a gentleman of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy entertain himself outside the presence of polite company?”

Francis’s eyebrow shot upward; the glint of humor which had been present in his earlier expression multiplied two fold, e’en as he arranged his features to smother it. “James.”

“Why, sir.” James put one hand to his heart in feigned shock. “I am all astonishment. You cannot mean to say you have considered self-abuse over a thorough recitation of the catechism. Perhaps you meant you tried composing hymns during Sunday rest?”

Francis let out a bark of a laugh before he bit his lip, visibly quieting himself. “Seems the temperament of certain members of the wardroom has not changed in my absence.”

“The Bible Boys have borne up well enough, as ever.”

“And I suppose the ABs and the mates remain the soul of piety.”

“Their hammocks move to and fro of their own accord during the first and second watch. I am told this is a result of increased Arctic winds belowdecks.”

This time, Francis’s smile was so wide that it showed the gap between his teeth. “Course it is.”

“Naturally,” answered James, clipping his words until his accent reached a verve and pitch similar to that of the eldest Admiralty lords. “How dare you insinuate otherwise, sir. There has never and shall never be such wanton dirtiness aboard one of Her Majesty’s warships.”

“Ah.” Francis let out a gusty sigh, and turned his gaze again to his hands. He looked less ashamed, now, merely forlorn and lacking. “In any case, I s’pose it’s for the best.”

James did not know what to say to that, but his features must have arranged themselves in a way that suggested mere curiosity, as Francis did not seem offended by his reaction. 

Instead, he tilted his head toward the closed door which separated his berth from the rest of the Great Cabin. “I haven’t—” he stopped, and gestured to his middle in a clumsy, vaguely-suggestive way. “Well. I, ah, haven’t. Since we left Greenhithe.”

James forced himself to count to two before answering. “You’ve not tried, or you’ve not….?”

“Between the drink,” Francis flushed deeply as he appeared to relive the full breadth of horrors that had accompanied his drying out, “and what little remains of my distant recollections, I’ve found vigor, but I’ve not truly…”

He shrugged in rather a helpless manner, and blushed all the brighter. 

“So,” James said diplomatically, brushing a lock of hair back from his face in a poor attempt at occupying his hands, “the body is willing, but the spirit remains––unmoved, shall we say.”

“Something like that.” Francis made an annoyed grunt of a noise. “Christ. Don’t know how you manage to sit there and listen to all this without cracking me in the skull.”

The rasp of his voice, low and soft, sparked a frisson of interest down James’s spine. He wondered what Francis might sound like when he was seeking such primal inspiration. How he might sound if he were touched. If he were kissed. Caressed.

The spark blazed to life low in James’s stomach as their eyes met across the captain’s table. He was speaking before he had time to formulate the thought completely. “I could help you with it, you know.”

Francis blinked in owlish surprise. “What?”

“Well, I—if it is only a matter of inspiration that keeps you from attaining satisfaction—well, you are a man, and you ought to have it, Francis. For god’s sake, after all that’s happened, you deserve that much. Alone or otherwise.”

Breathing harshly, James bit the inside of his mouth until he felt he had attained some measure of control. Oh, Christ.

“Do I?” came the reply.

“Always.” The flame of anticipation that had settled in James’s middle had fanned into a heady blaze. “Let me give it to you. I would—that is, I should like to.”

“Jesus God,” said Francis.

It was too much. He had admitted far too much, and now Francis would withdraw, apologizing, demurring—oh no, James, we need not, we’re not as solitary as all that. He would make an excuse, of course. A kind one, perhaps. But he would never look at James again without the shadow of the offer waiting behind his eyes, he would hate him, he would never again—

“You would have me?”

James startled in his seat, meeting Francis’s inquiring gaze with shock-wide eyes. He had said nothing that indicated buggery. “If you wish it, yes.”

Nodding, Francis absorbed this answer, and kept silent for nearly half a minute before meeting James’s searching gaze once more. “Will it hurt?”

Oh. James wanted to gather the man into a tender embrace right then and there. Instead, he expelled a deep breath, and unfolded his arms, holding his hand out palm-up to Francis as if requesting the next dance. “No, my dear Francis. I’d not hurt you.”

_I would not hurt you for the world._

Francis gave a jerky nod, as if he had talked himself into the idea at last. Drawing himself to his full height, he gestured toward the closed door of the berth, and got up as if he would cross toward the door. “Very well, then. We, ah. That is, we ought to—”

James held up a hand, indicating Francis should belay this order. 

First, he stood up and removed his coat. Then, he swept over to the outer door and locked it. Next, he took the coal shovel and tossed a few pieces onto the brazier before dropping the shovel back into the scuttle. It clanged like the dickens; James hardly cared, given the fascinated way Francis was watching him, like a schoolboy drawn to a beautiful butterfly.

Smiling, he indicated that Francis should go into the berth first. “Come on, then.”

Dutifully, Francis obeyed. Once inside, he seemed rather shy, and glanced at James with apprehension suffusing his cheeks. “How ought—is there a way you would—?”

“Peace, Francis.” Relaxing at last, James stepped forward and placed his hands on the Terror Captain’s shoulders, keeping the touch amiable and light. The pads of his thumbs skated over the seams of Francis’s shirtsleeves. “Our time together need not be as fearful as all that.”

“God in heaven.” Francis rolled his eyes. “Well, what must I expect? A full hour of boasts before the blessed event? Tales of your skills with a—”

Smiling despite himself, James leaned forward and kissed him, cutting off what was sure to be an idiotic jape. 

Francis startled under the touch, but yielded after no more than a second or two, tilting his head into James’s hands as a flower might turn toward the sun. 

The glory of such a simple touch was inexpressible, particularly when it yielded such visceral results. Here as in all things, Francis was incapable of artifice: when James deepened the kiss, and crowded Francis up against the rail of the berth, Francis groaned low in his throat. When James trailed gentle palms down planes of lean muscle to rest in the cradle of Francis’s lower back, Francis shivered in this newly-charged embrace.

Breaking the kiss at last, James nosed into the hollow of Francis’s throat, plying soft little kisses across ruddy freckled skin as he caught his breath. “We shall rid you of this—” he balled a corner of Francis’s nightshirt in one fist “—in a moment.”

“James,” gasped Francis, but James was as a man possessed. He renewed his attentions with equal vigor as before, now devoting his full attention to Francis’s throat and jaw and the delicious spot behind his left ear. The moment he used his tongue to gently trace over this tender spot, Francis startled like a spooked deer, and yelped, “Good Christ!”

“Hm?” James tugged at Francis’s earlobe with his teeth, delighting in the hiss of breath this elicited, as well as the iron twitch of a hard cock against the leg of his trousers. “What was that?”

“You’re a-a damn tease,” huffed Francis, though he was so breathless that this did not truly qualify as an insult.

James just laughed, amusement heightened when he noticed gooseflesh rising across the delicate skin of Francis’s neck. “So noted.”

Chuckling, he dipped his head lower, and allowed his hands to wander beneath Francis’s thin shirt at last: first along the collar, tracing over the man’s clavicle and chest muscles, then far further afield. He skated one hand up the hem just as he lowered his head to Francis’s chest and tongued at one rosy nipple.

Francis’s hands tightened in the crown of his hair, and he made a choked noise.

“Only men aboard are on duty,” James murmured against Francis’s skin, then blew a soft breath against red wet flesh; Francis shuddered with a suppressed moan, clutching him even closer. “Thus, I would hear you.”

“Christ,” came the hissed response.

As James laved his way down Francis’s broad chest, caressing and nipping and licking at ruddy freckled skin, the hands tangled in his hair tightened further, and Francis’s breathing became shallower, faster.

“The bleeding mouth on you,” he gasped, as James pressed his face into the seam of Francis’s leg, too busy unbuttoning his Captain’s flies to register the words. When he got the trousers open, and unlaced the man’s smallclothes, he stopped and sat back, eyes widening.

“Good Christ.”

Francis glanced down, seeming alarmed. “What? Is there—?”

“You’ve been hiding _this_ away from admiring eyes, all these years?” murmured James, petting down the tops of Francis’s thighs in long, easy strokes as he admired the thick proud cock now jutting out into the space between their bodies. It was beautiful, truly: wide as a length of thick rope and curved like the handle of a saber, ruddy red and pulsing with life. He was beautiful. “Francis. You absolute fool.”

“Oh, god,” murmured Francis, as James lifted a shaking hand to touch him. When he made contact with tender heated flesh, Francis actually whimpered, and a drop of fluid welled up from the head of his prick, yearning towards the frozen floor. “Please.”

With a rough, animal noise, James fumbled to put it in his mouth, relishing the way Francis’s entire body stiffened and jerked after he did so. Normally, James would be more than willing to suck and lick and kiss a beautiful specimen such as Francis’s till the man was insatiable with desire––till he spilt down James’s throat in gulleys. But he had promised Francis that he would take him, and he would remain a man of his word.

After a long interval, he pulled away, gasping, causing Francis to groan and sigh and drag a trembling hand through the sweaty hair by James’s temples. “What…”

“Promised I would have you,” James told him in a low voice, maneuvering him up onto the berth with shocking speed; Francis himself looked shocked to have obeyed so quickly. “And I shall do. You’ll come around my cock, and no sooner.”

Francis’s mouth fell open, but he merely nodded, eyes blown dark in the low light of the oil lamp. “Grease in the second drawer.”

Quickly, James fumbled it open, yanking up a tin of salve and ripping the lid off; there was no time for elegance or feigned detachment. James wanted to feel Francis around him, and he wanted it now. He scooped a generous amount of salve onto his fingers, working a thin layer around Francis’s sensitive prick before moving his hand lower, past full aching stones and up to the tight furled ring of muscle beyond.

Circling this with greased fingers, he rubbed at Francis’s entrance and between his cheeks for a long interval, kissing at his generous stomach and chest all throughout, till Francis was arching into the touch, sighing, gasping.

“Want you to—” he finally growled, as James dragged a clean hand down his chest, toying at that mighty cock e’en as he increased the pressure of his strokes behind. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

“Nearly there, Francis.” 

James gathered more grease on his fingers and pressed in, up, further. He watched, enraptured, as Francis felt the stretch of being opened for the first time. His eyes widened and his mouth moved soundlessly, but his hips jerked forward once, twice, again, e’en as James forced himself to slow his hand.

“Fffff—uh-cking—hellfire.” Francis was flushed tomato-red from face to chest, now pressed into the berth on his back with one of James’s hands between his legs and the other steady on his shoulder. “James, it’s—yes.”

“Good?” rasped James, though the answer was clear by the way Francis’s body responded when he crooked his finger. He strung tight as a pulley, eyes rolling back into his head.

“More,” Francis whispered, and turned his face into his pillow, breath coming uneven and fast. “More, James.”

“Another,” James confirmed.

His hands shook with anticipation, but he did not neglect his task, opening Francis up with slow, patient strokes of two fingers, then three, till Francis grabbed at his wrists with shaking hands, babbling, sweating, looking as dazed as if he had sledged a hundred miles across a summer lawn.

“In me, James. In me. Please.”

Nodding, James withdrew his hand, and greased himself up; he had hardly noticed his own need up to this point. All he cared about was Francis. All he wanted was to see him fly apart under him—to shudder and shake—to come till he was insensible.

“Let me kiss you?” he whispered, suddenly fearful that all this would end and be gone in the time it took for Bridgens to knock him up from a fitful sleep.

Gasping, Francis nodded yes, and James bent his head to do so, kissing and licking at that beautiful wanting mouth till Francis made a desperate keening noise, hips rocking up against James’s fingers. Only then did James pull away, certain that it was time. Only then did he shuck his own smallclothes down his legs, kicking them aside with gusto.

As he positioned himself at Francis’s entrance with one hand, he grabbed for Francis’s hip with the other, then bore in as slowly as he could. No sooner had he pressed his head inside than Francis made a high, reedy sound, went rigid, and quaked in James’s arms, spending across his chest and stomach in long thick ropes.

“Fucking Christ,” he gasped when it was over, eyes fluttering open and snapping to James’s as if he could not believe his own reaction. “Oh, Jaysus. Oh, James, I—”

“Nonsense,” James hushed him, biting his lip to keep from bursting into a fit of ill-timed laughter. “Wager I could have you spend a second time once I get it all the way in.”

“Wh—you—braggart!” wheezed Francis, but he sagged backwards into the berth with a wild noise, and trembled in James’s arms with what must have been relief, giggling like a schoolgirl as James carefully withdrew.

James licked the spend from Francis's cheek and his chest and his softening cock. He kissed Francis with heady abandon, plundering his smiling mouth, then his neck, then his chest. Then he urged Francis’s legs up higher, pressed the blunt head of his own cock at the soft loosened hole, and pushed inside, only raising his gaze once he was certain the angle was right, and he could bury himself to the hilt.

Francis’s breathing had gone shallow again; he was currently watching James’s face, open-mouthed, wordless, flushed as pink as dusk. Red skies at night, sailor’s delight.

“That’s it,” urged James as he pulled nearly all the way out, and then thrust back in, more to himself than to Francis. “Stay with me.”

He cupped the side of Francis’s face with his clean hand, and braced the other on the bedsheets, offering a silent apology to Jopson and Gibson and Sir John and to whichever English company had fulfilled the linen order. Then, he began to thrust, slow and languid at first, causing Francis’s eyes to roll back in his head every few seconds, then faster and faster. As their movements gained speed, James felt like a draughthorse at Ascot, powerful and lightning-quick, thundering ever closer to his victory, spurred on by the sound of Francis groaning under him; Francis’s hips canting up to match James’s every desperate thrust; Francis’s hands digging in at James’s sides and at his braced arms till James could spy white haloes blooming around indented fingerprints.

“Oh, Christ, James!” Francis’s movements had grown erratic again; James whined low in his throat as the urge to come increased two-fold. “Surely I’ll not—I’ll nnnh—oh sweet merciful Mary, I’ll—!”

“Yes, Francis,” growled James, hips snapping out of rhythm now. “You can. You shall.”

Keening, Francis seized and grasped at James’s back, close-trimmed nails scoring gentle lines down James’s shoulders as another spurt of white seed burst onto his stomach. Without warning, James’s own pleasure peaked and felled him like a tree; his hips stilling and his breath stopping as Francis’s innermost muscles milked him dry.

Only then, finally, did he collapse down onto Francis’s chest, shivering, stunned, and spent. 

They lay together here for several minutes, silent but not ominously so as they got their breath back. Francis ran heated palms up and down James’s sweat-soaked back. James contented himself with nosing into the side of Francis’s neck, planting gentle kisses along the column of his throat and slinging an arm over his middle as he tucked himself into the space between Francis’s body and the wall of the berth.

“I can’t believe,” Francis finally said, quiet and gruff, as if he had not the energy to pitch his voice much louder, “that you’ve a bloody natural talent for this, too.”

“Oh, my dear Francis.” James kissed a cluster of freckles around his collarbone, and relished the way Francis’s face flushed anew at this gesture. Reaching down, he drew the blanket up over them both. “Cherish the discovery of at least one unknown passage, if we are destined not to find the first.”

Francis laughed aloud, just as the oil lamp sitting on his desk sputtered and went out. “Christ, James. You’re a damn rascal.”

“Hmm. Perhaps your rascal ought to favor you with a very scandalous account of this achievement, if you refuse to hear all others.”

“What I hear is that your mouth’s insatiable as ever,” sighed Francis, but even this well-worn complaint felt fond and beautifully tender today, particularly when Francis’s hand sought out his own, just below the blankets, and squeezed it firmly. “Even in the dark.”

“Even then,” James echoed, and squeezed back, feeling better than he had in months. Soon, the sun would return. The men would get to enjoy a Carnivale that they had all built together. Perhaps he and Francis could spend another evening like this, keeping the loneliness and the perpetual chill at bay. “Even then.”

**Author's Note:**

> for **hikaru** \- I hope you like this gift work! As you can see, I really leaned into the "why not make it canon compliant AND sexy" aspect of your prompt list. <3
> 
> "Breeze-up" is a horsing term because I found that both hilarious and appropriate for this pic: "A sale in which unraced two-year-olds are ridden, galloped or ‘breezed’ along the racecourse. Most of the horses have been purchased as yearlings, and are then broken in and ridden in preparation for them galloping at the sale."
> 
> As to where the rest of the men are....probably they're all out on the ice building Carnivale? I guess? I used more of the novel timeline here, where Francis sobers up a couple of weeks prior to Carnivale. tl;dr Everything's made up and the points don't matter.


End file.
